Kerangal Maylis Book order

A beautiful collection of seven short stories and a novella themed around women's voices from the author of Mend the Living and Painting Time

"Paul, aged 10, who lives with his aunt, sets out on an expedition to the mountains with his parents' old friend, Bruce. Having reappeared after three years of silence, Bruce is eager to keep the promise he made to Paul many years ago to take him on a three-day mountain trek. Paul, whose parents' absence is never explained, longs for Bruce's friendship and wants badly to prove himself. But his is also timid and unsure and Bruce who is better at doing than explaining doesn't make it any easier. A dramatic event gives Paul the chance to find his inner strength, and to show himself and everyone else what he is capable of. And he has earned a trip to the Rockies next year. A breath-taking mountain adventure, set in the French alps, told in the form of a graphic novel with just a few words by Maylis de Kerangal and beautiful, dramatic screen prints by Tom Haugomat. This is a powerful book for boys on the cusp of adolescence."-- Provided by publisher

An aesthetic and existential coming-of-age novel exploring the apprenticeship of a young female painter, Paula Karst, who is enrolled at the famous Institut de Peinture in Brussels. With the attention of a documentary filmmaker, de Kerangal follows Paula's apprenticeship, punctuated by brushstrokes, hard work, sleepless nights, sore muscles, and long, festive evenings. After completing her studies at the Institute, Paula continues to practice her art in Paris, in Moscow, then in Italy on the sets of great films, all as if rehearsing for a grand finale: at a job working on Lascaux IV, a facsimile reproduction of the world's most famous paleolithic cave art and the apotheosis of human cultural expression.

"A slim, bountiful, beautifully written (and gorgeously translated) 'Portrait of the Chef as a Young Man.'" --Nancy Klinke, The New York Times Book Review One of BBC Culture's Ten Books to Read this March and The Rumpus Book Club Pick for March Maylis de Kerangal follows up her acclaimed novel The Heart with a dissection of the world of a young Parisian chef More like a poetic biographical essay on a fictional person than a novel, The Cook is a coming-of-age journey centered on Mauro, a young self-taught cook. The story is told by an unnamed female narrator, Mauro’s friend and disciple who we also suspect might be in love with him. Set not only in Paris but in Berlin, Thailand, Burma, and other far-flung places over the course of fifteen years, the book is hyperrealistic—to the point of feeling, at times, like a documentary. It transcends this simplistic form, however, through the lyricism and intensely vivid evocative nature of Maylis de Kerangal’s prose, which conjures moods, sensations, and flavors, as well as the exhausting rigor and sometimes violent abuses of kitchen work. In The Cook, we follow Mauro as he finds his path in life: baking cakes as a child; cooking for his friends as a teenager; a series of studies, jobs, and travels; a failed love affair; a successful business; a virtual nervous breakdown; and—at the end—a rediscovery of his hunger for cooking, his appetite for life.

The multi-award-winning compact epic of passion, ambition and the American Dream.